Former Sunderland striker Jermain Defoe was appointed as manager of National League club Woking earlier this week.
Former Sunderland striker Jermain Defoe experienced a dramatic start to his managerial career after his Woking side shared the points in a six-goal thriller with National League rivals Eastleigh.
Defoe was officially named as new Cards manager earlier in the week and he was joined by another former Sunderland star after confirming Paul Bracewell will take up a role as assistant manager. The duo were in the dugout for the first time on Friday as their reign at the Laithwaite Community Stadium got underway after what Defoe described as a ‘crazy’ first few days in charge.
The dramatic events off the pitch were more than matched by what came to pass on the pitch as a late equaliser from Kian Pennant, nephew of Defoe’s former England Under-21 team-mate Jermaine Pennant, ensured his side battled their way to a 3-3 draw with Eastleigh and that left the former Sunderland star to praise the character shown by his players.
He told the club website: “The last few days have been crazy, haven’t they? Not just for me, but Brace (Paul Bracewell) coming in as well, you just want to get on the grass, training, and get the game done. But you have to understand it’s part and parcel of the game now and I said to the players there has been a lot of noise around the club and sometimes it’s not easy to deal with for the players. We will deal with that and the fact they showed that sort of character towards the end of the game, we should have gone on and won it, we were the better team. To show that character to come back into the game was very pleasing for me.”
Performance
Former Rangers striker Jermain Defoe began is managerial reign at Woking in dramatic fashion. Cr: Getty Images.placeholder image
Former Rangers striker Jermain Defoe began is managerial reign at Woking in dramatic fashion. Cr: Getty Images. | Getty Images
Defoe will now prepare his players for the second part of a hectic Easter weekend in non-league’s top tier as they visit relegation threatened Braintree Town on Monday afternoon. The hosts are sitting second from bottom in the National League table after winning just eight of their 42 league games and head into the game on the back of suffering successive defeats against Southend United and Carlisle United over the last ten days.
However, Defoe is also wary of the need for his players to ensure they recover from Friday’s dramatic draw and insisted their will be no excuses if they don’t produce a performance and result in the first away game of his managerial reign.
“It’s important for the players to recover. We have to recover. We had a good presentation yesterday, someone came in I’d worked with previously and he came in and did a presentation on high level performance and recovery, sleep and nutrition and when it’s back-to-back, how do you recover to get those level of performances. Hopefully the players took that on board and you don’t want to make excuses because it’s the same for the other teams that have played loads of games. But if we can recover and do things the right way, hopefully we can go into the game fresh."
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